Today Sun Mon
It is forcast to be Partly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 26, 2012
Partly Cloudy
22°/18°		 It is forcast to be Mostly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 27, 2012
Mostly Cloudy
22°/15°		 It is forcast to be Chance of a Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 28, 2012
Chance of a Thunderstorm
24°/14°

17 Comments

news

Death Holds A Fork

By Jonathan Goldsbie

2008_7_23DownWithMedicine_0.jpg
2008_7_23DownWithMedicin-02.jpg
Photographed by Nadia Halim in a women’s washroom in the food court at York Lanes, on the York University campus. She writes “Seriously, there are some grave issues in our society surrounding death and dying, but this graffiti just made me giggle uncontrollably. It’s that top sentence especially.”
Nadia titled the photo “Most Obviously Doomed Activist Cause Ever!” which we had a tough time disagreeing with, until we saw this.

Filed under: , , , , , ,

Report error Send a tip

Comments

  • rek

    In blue on the right side:
    Some people want to live and want a second chance idiot
    you refuse medical treatment (?) is your choice but it should always be available to others!!

  • Jonathan Goldsbie

    I had trouble with the same word, rek, but Maneesh was able to decipher is as “that.” With punctuation added to reflect the spacing, it reads:
    “Some people want to live and have a second chance. Idiot. You refuse medical treatment — that is your choice — but it should always be available to others!!”
    And then someone else writes below “I agree” and then a peace sign.

  • Amanda Buckiewicz

    I still think more people would rally towards an M & M tournament than would for the de-medicalization of public space.
    What I want to know is: what happens if we bring Smarties into the tournament??

  • mdwebb

    I’m pretty sure that M&M bit was on the Best of Craigslist at one point…

  • Gauldar

    I actualy know someone who has this belief(due to his religion… like usual) that when someone is resuscitated that the soul left the body and a demon has entered it in it’s place. He sufferes from depression though, and my guess is that belief is just there to justify killing himself when he feels he needs to otherwise he wouldn’t have a reason to state it. My guess is this add triggered the same thing in this woman.

  • mantisory

    Second chances are nice…I agree.
    On the other hand, I think our society needs to address the question of where it ends – do we really need to go to the extreme (medical) lengths we do?
    I am not one to make some kind of ‘final solution’, but i think we need the medical profession to come up with a better definition of doing no harm…

  • Mark Ostler

    One can agree to a Do Not Resucitate order, but I don’t know if there are any age/medical requirements.

  • rek

    I’ve been thinking about this, but I can’t come up with any other example of medicalized public space. Is she including ads for back pain and erectile dysfunction? Signs pointing to fire escapes? Diaper changing stations?
    And what’s next, should we let burning buildings run their course, leave flood victims stranded on their rooftops, ban the Heimlich manoeuver?
    As a transhumanist I’m puzzled by the pro-random-death position.

  • mantisory

    Yes…all in the name of culling the herd :)
    Why would you be puzzled, Rek? Random deaths have, and always will occur, so the point is mute…

  • Gauldar

    When I read over the words again, it made me wonder if this is what a devout follower of Murphy’s Laws sounds like.

  • andrew

    Well, as a CPR/defib person, what they tell is us this: they’re dead. Not much worse you can do. You bring ‘em back to life, excellent! However, chances are it’s not going to happen. But every little bit helps. So hit ‘em on the chest 30 times, kiss em deeply, and zap ‘em.
    Besides, if I somehow manage to get yr heart pumping again, you’re still going to the hospital. You’re still likely to suffer from complications. You can instruct the doctors not to revive you there. First responders can’t find out from a recent corpse whether they want to be revived or not. We don’t have the time and usually we’ll be too damn freaked out when we break the ribcage on that first downstroke to ask about to see what the deader’s beliefs are on revival.

  • rek

    mantisory – Random deaths are one thing, but advocating on their behalf is something else entirely. (IIRC, I’ve read that even given effective biological immortality — we stop aging but remain just as vulnerable to outside factors — accidents would account for a life expectancy of just 700 years.)
    There’s a reason death as some natural and beautiful thing to be embraced fearlessly usually doesn’t associate with images of people pinned under wrecked cars or covered in 3rd degree burns or mauled and eaten alive by grizzlies. It’s a delusion reserved for the lucky few who get to die surrounded by Gaussian-blurred relatives in a hospital bed at the age of 97.

  • perspecticus

    AEDs (defibrillators) don’t bring people back from the dead (a la Flatliners and countless other Hollywood misrepresentations – my favourite being The Abyss). They actually stop your heart from beating inefficiently or irradically so that it has a chance to reset and start beating properly.
    This is why folks are told to ‘clear’ – it’s so the electric shock doesn’t stop their heart.

  • andrew

    Yes, but you might as well refer to successful AED/CPR as bringing someone back to life – technically they are dead prior to it. No heartbeat [despite the technical beating of the heart in such a way that it doesn't actually pump blood it just spasms]. No breathing. D-E-A-D.
    That’s what the EMS instructors and St.John’s Ambulance instructors call it. They explain the technicality but to make it clear as to what’s going on they use the non-technical terms.
    Also, despite the misrepresentation, the scene in The Abyss is totally amazing.

  • piccola

    The M&Ms thing was definitely on the Best of Craiglist. And it only reaffirms my belief that peanut M&Ms are a more evolved species of the original.

  • rek

    Peanut M&Ms have exo- and endoskeletons.

  • Miss Anthropy

    Andrew’s first comment emphasizes the issue of the demands placed on our healthcare system by people’s expectations. The problem isn’t that people should be denied medical aid, but that as a taxpaying public we have come to expect a level of healthcare that is unsustainable in our current system.
    Basically, money is tight everywhere, and someone’s going to get screwed. It’s especially hard when treatments exist that are too expensive to be made available to everyone. Do public defibrulators do enough good to justify devoting funds to them, instead of to new and expensive chemotherapy treaments? Who’s the poor soul that has to make the decision and take the public heat for it?
    Sorry for the rant. Discuss…